The Plains of Passage: Earth's Children, Book 4

I read the first book in this series shortly after it first came out and was captivated by the story and the setting. Auel had an excellent idea for a story and did a bang up job of telling it. The next four books in this series I grabbed as soon as they were released. When these books became available as audio books on cassette I bought them and listened to them again and again over the years. Now I have the entire series again through Audible. Good investment in money and great investment in time. Personally I think Sandra Burr does a good job with the series. My only complaint is that it has been 31 years since the first book in the series came out and Auel said at that time it would be a six book series. For anyone that's interested book 6 'Land of Painted Caves' will finally be released in book stores on March 29, 2011. I hope Audible makes it available then as well I've been waiting on for 31 years. Actually the five books of this series that have already been published read more like one exceptionally long book. I know a lot of people don???t care for the detail that Auel goes into but I like it. I will admit that this book does get a little slow at times, but not bad.

It seems you get decreasing returns with this series. "The Clan of the Cave Bear" was great fun, "Valley of the Horses" was pretty good fun, and "The Mammoth Hunters" was fun enough to not make you want a refund of what you paid for it. "The Plains of Passage," has left the realm of fun and headed straight into Yawnsville. It's dreadfully boring, with far too many overwrought sex scenes and descriptions of native fauna and flora. If you have been caught up into the series, as I was, and now find you have to keep going, as I did, do yourself a favor and skip past "Plains of Passage" straight to "The Shelters of Stone." You won't be missing anything of any importance if you do so.

Started the series with Clan of the Cave Bear. I have to say this is a very entertaining series. I only had a few times it dragged a little. Overall it was exciting and enjoyable. Looking forward to the next book in the series. Hard to stop listening. Find myself making excuses to listen all of the time.

I have had this entire series before, when the first books first came out. Ms Auel did some fantastic research to make her work as accurate as someone in modern times could. The series is extremely well written.
The only "complaint" I would have is that she repeats things a bit too often.
Otherwise, I absolutely LOVE the series.

I enjoy the historical aspect of Jean Auel's Earth Children series, but usually she has a good balance of interesting facts and great fiction. This one did not have as much story content, but had a ton of information about every possible plant and animal that has ever lived. It got to be a bit too much at times and I felt like I had to trudge through this book. The others kept me more captivated with the character's story line and Ayla's new adventures. I hope the next one gets back to that.

This book is a richly detailed adventure story of an epic prehistoric journey across ice age Europe. As one might expect with any lengthy journey, there are routine parts where the participants just plod along. But the author has filled even these parts of the story with meticulously researched details that add a high level of interest to the story. There is still plenty of action interspersed with the more routine parts of the journey to keep the book moving. As with any journey, the over goal is to enjoy the journey, not just rush to the end point.

The author has an uncanny ability to take the reader inside the heads of the main characters to better understand their dilemmas and related thoughts about other characters in the book. The character development is so outstanding that one feels that the main characters are long time friends, and that you are even following along with them on their journey.

This book provides a reasonable insight into prehistoric life based not only on the author's opinions, but on substantial research as well. Did everything happen exactly as Jean Auel presents it? Probably not exactly, but that doesn't really matter. She has woven an intricate story line around the available research from that time period and produced an entertaining saga to escape into.

I presume that writing this book was perhaps more difficult than the first three books since it involved a long journey. But the author has carried it out in grand fashion. In addition to being a stand-alone novel, it is also a bridge in the Earth's Children series between the wandering couple in The Mammoth Hunters to the end of the journey by the arrival at Jondalar's home, the Ninth Cave of the Zelondonii.

I enjoyed this book immensely as part of the continuing saga of Ayla and Jondalar. If you are a prospective reader looking for input, I would encourage you to try this book and make up your own mind about it.

Review provided by Jonathan for Jodi Lee.

Like listening to a nag, this book recaps and retells what happened in the previous books. It's very annoying since we want to get to the story of this book but the author has this idea that her readers doesnt know the previous books. She can learn from Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time.

Book 4.
I've read these books over and over. I always find something new to enjoy.

I enjoyed this book the most yet in the series. Lots of suspense, surprises and drama along with the continual building of Ayla and Jondalaar's relationship. I love Sandra Burr's performance of the characters especially Ayla.

i have always liked Auel's stories. I may like this one too. But, I will have to read it. I just did not connect with the narrarator, so I didn't listen very long.

I would listen to anything by S.M. Stirling

I will pass up books read by Sandra Burr

I don't know how I would edit this book as I listened to so little of it.